Without a Superhero
by SydCryn
Summary: Clark goes missing and the FBI steps in to help find him. L&CWoT XOver.
1. Chapter 1

Without a Superhero

Lois & Clark/Without a Trace Crossover

Disclaimer: I own nothing from Without a Trace, Lois & Clark, ABC, CBS, etc. Don't hurt me.

Without a Trace: For those of you that don't watch Without a Trace a short run down can be found on the CBS website. Points of Note: The first scene reenacts the last known event that the missing person was a part of, and then at the end of the scene the person fades out to signify that from that point on the person's whereabouts is a mystery. There are typically random flashbacks that will be designated as such. Each new scene keeps the viewer updated with the date and time as well as how many hours the person has been missing.

Lois & Clark: Even if you haven't watched Lois & Clark almost everyone knows the classic story of Superman, so go with that. Lois doesn't know Clark is Superman at this point in time, but they're getting pretty cozy. I know that Lois wouldn't typically be so worried if Clark hadn't shown up to work the next day, but I'm taking a little creative liberty. Actually I'm taking a lot of creative liberty all over. Don't mind it.

Plot Notes: For the sake of meshing two very random series together NYC is going to be the same as Metropolis. If I mention the city name I'll probably refer to it as Metropolis, if out of sheer habit than anything else. There is no NY Times in this universe though. Sorry. And for the sake of timeline we're just going to pretend that L&C is running parallel to Without a Trace and is 10 years later instead of in the 90's. I don't think it should be an issue though. So I'm looking at early second season for both of them.

Author Notes: I'll fess up right away that I just dabble in writing, but every now and then the plot bunny has an interesting idea and I'll at least attempt to work it out on paper. I'll also fess up to the fact that this sounds like a strange idea, but I'm trying my best to mesh together the two series into something semi-believable.

Monday, 5:55 PM

Lois Lane looked around the bullpen of the Daily Planet newsroom and let out a very small sigh. It had been a long day and she was ready to call it quits. Her partner, Clark Kent, was seated at the desk opposite hers, typing away at his computer, most likely putting the finishing touches on his notes from an earlier interview. She sauntered toward him and plopped down in the guest chair situated next to his desk.

"Are you almost ready to call it quits for the day?"

Clark looked up from his screen after a second, "Yeah, I just need five more minutes." He typed a few more things before looking back toward Lois, "Walk you to your car when I'm done?"

She smiled a little bit and nodded. "I'm just going to run to the bathroom first, I'll be back in two minutes." She hopped up from the chair with a lighter step and headed off toward the stairs that would take her up and out of the pen. Maybe she could convince Clark to come over and get some pizza with her. It'd been a long time since they'd just had the chance to relax together as friends. Especially since Lex and the Planet takeover. They had tried to mend their friendship, but the stitches were large and messy, and the wounds underneath still peeked out every now and then.

As she came back from the bathroom her phone started ringing at her desk and she reached over without hesitation to answer it. "Lois Lane." It was a source on the other end for a story she had been working on solo. It as few and far between that she didn't work on a story with Clark nowadays, but there were some pieces that just didn't require two city journalists on them. This happened to be one of them. She looked toward Clark and noted that he was shutting down his computer and gathering his coat and briefcase. "I'm sorry Tom, one second," she told her source on the other end of the phone. "Clark!"

He glanced up at her summons, "Hmm?"

She gave him her most apologetic look, "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to do some work on this lead for a bit before going home. Just go on without me." As much as she wanted to spend some time with Clark, the story still always came first. She'd learned her lessons, the hard way.

"No problem, want to come over later for some pizza?" He finished putting his work away before wandering over to her desk, bag slug over his shoulder.

A small smile lit up her face, he had been thinking the same thing as she had, "Sure. I don't think I'll be more than an hour or two. Green peppers and olives?"

"Would I order it any other way for you?"

She laughed a little, "I should hope not. I have to get back to this now though." A gesture toward the phone accompanied her statement.

"I'll talk to you later." And with that he turned and headed toward the elevators. She watched him the entire way, absently continuing her conversation with Tom on the other end of the phone line. After waiting half a minute for the elevator it came and Clark stepped in and she turned back to her desk to concentrate fully on the information she was receiving. As the elevator doors closed on Clark Kent his image vanished from view.

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Tuesday 1:43 PM 20 Hours Missing

Jack Malone sighed and rubbed his temples, the woman on the other end of his phone line was giving him a headache. A major one. Dealing with reporters was not one of his strong suites, and something he typically left to Vivian, his second-in-command. Unfortunately this was one reporter that was not to be detered. He sighed and tried to interject himself into the conversation once again, "Ms. Lane, I told you before, we will send someone over to the Daily Planet to talk to you in a few hours. All of my agents are out working on another case..." He pulled the phone away from his ear slightly as another explosion of sound errupted from the phone, "Please, I understand that you're worried about your partner. I understand that he's a high profile journalist, I understand that you have rules about calling in when you're out, and I believe you. But the facts are that we need to give the police a little more time to work on this, we need time to do research, and I don't have the man power to help you at this instant. Providing everything goes to plan I will have agents for you in four hours and they will come talk to you then." Another explosion of sound came from the phone before it was summarily slammed down on the other end. The blissful quietness of ring tone now met his ear and he silently lowered the phone.

After contemplating for a few minutes he raised the phone again and hit the speed dial setting for Sam's phone. After a few rings it picked up, "Spade."

"Yeah, it's Jack. Is the case almost wrapped up? I think I might have another big one coming in. Missing reporter."

On the other end of the line Samantha Spade looked out the window of the large black Suburban as it whizzed down the road. Vivian was firmly in control of the wheel and they were headed down to the local police station. "Yeah, we actually have Jamie. It was a runaway case and as soon as we let out a little bit of bait she came running right out to us. Martin and Danny are with her, we're meeting them at the local precinct to talk to the parents and close the case."

Jack leaned back in his chair and let a wave of silent relief wash over him, that was one less thing that they had to worry about now. And a young girl was now safely back at home, it was now up to the parents to fix the problems surrounding her flight. From the reports he had received it hadn't been anything that they needed to continue looking in to. "Okay, as soon as you're done there get back and we'll start a debrief."

Static crackled in his ear as Sam's voice came back at him, "Who is it Jack?"

The wave of relief that had come over him at the news that the missing girl had shown up was squashed again. "Clark Kent. Daily Planet."

Sam responded that she'd be back as soon as possible and they both hung up, each to go off to work on their own assignments.

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Tuesday, 3:32 PM 22 Hours Missing

Jack passed a folder to each member of his Missing Persons team that was gathered for the debrief. A large 8x10" color photo of Clark Kent was already pinned up to the white board that had so recently been cleared of information from the last case. The timeline was depressingly empty except for one line that designated the last time his parter, Lois Lane, had seen him. "Clark Kent of the Daily Planet is our next assignment. We received a call a few hours ago from his partner. He apparently left work at approximately six o'clock last night and made plans with Ms. Lane to meet her later. He never showed for the plans and never showed for work today. Because of the outbreak of fires down at Hobb's Bay that is taking most of the police attention the case has been shifted to us."

Martin looked up from the case file that he was flipping through, "Why such a high priority if he hasn't even been gone twenty-four hours? Missing journalists usually turn up after a day or so, they were just out following some supposed lead that took them off to wherever. And for that matter doesn't Superman usually take care of the Daily Planet problems?"

Superman. He had always been an interesting kink for the FBI. Most of the cases they worked on didn't fall under the sight of the big boy in blue, but he had always been a source of neverending annoyance to some of the other departments in the Bureau. They all grudgingly appreciated his assistance, but he had tendencies of swooping in and solving a problem that the had been working on for weeks in a matter of hours and then disappearing again, leaving them with three weeks wasted and nothing to show for the effort. There was a huge push to try and get him to work closer with the authorities so they could coordinate efforts for better efficiency all around. Jack was indifferent on the subject, never having worked with him, but it would be interesting to see if they had a run in on this particular case. "It's a higher priority because of Mr. Kent's status in the journalism community. Apparently he's disappeared on the job before, but never for this long of a period of time and the Planet is worried. They did some checking and some unsavory individuals have recently been let out of jail that are apparently not particularly fond of the intrepid journalist. So they called in the police, who in turn called us. As for Superman, no one can get ahold of him so we're just going to do our job as if he doesn't exist for the time being. Any other questions?"

Everyone looked at each other for confirmation that there weren't any questions and then back at Jack for further instructions.

"Alright, Sam and Martin, I want you at Kent's apartment, Vivian and Danny, head to the Daily Planet, talk to his parter, the Editor, and anyone else that saw him yesterday. Find out every step he made and then get back to me with what you find."

As if one the four other team members got up from the table and grouped off to prepare for their assignments. Jack stayed behind for a few seconds to contemplate the picture of Clark Kent smiling at him from the white board. If only pictures could talk and tell him where the missing reporter was. The case wasn't sitting well with him. Reporters from nationally recognized newspapers didn't just up and disappear without a sinister motive behind it.


	2. Chapter 2

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Tuesday, 4:52 PM

23 Hours Missing

Lois Lane was a wreck. There was no real question about that fact. Her partner was AWOL and not even Bobby Bigmouth could turn up any inkling of where he had gone. Admittedly he had only been gone a day, and if it was any other journalist she wouldn't be that worried. But this just wasn't like Clark.

She idly clicked around on the document that she had open and was supposedly editing. It was just a fluff piece meant to keep her busy while Perry called around to his sources, trying to see if anyone had heard anything from Clark. She'd long ago gone through his computer and come up with nothing. Unless the United Steel Workers wanted revenge for Clark writing a puff piece on their upcoming rally then there was nothing in his files to even hint at any bit of foul play. She'd called Martha even, only to learn that she hadn't heard from her son in almost a week. Two individuals in dark suits appeared at her desk and pulled her out of her contemplations. "Can I help you?"

Vivian pulled out her ID to show it to the reporter, "Yes, I'm Agent Johnson and this is Agent Taylor, we're from the FBI. We understand that you've filed a missing persons report for your parter, Clark Kent?"

Lois sat up straighter, "Yes, he's been missing for almost twenty-four hours now. Why don't we go into the conference room and talk about this?"

The two agents nodded their consent and followed Lois into one of the side conference rooms where they took a seat around the table. Once they were all settled Danny spoke up first, "Now Ms. Lane, can you tell us why you are so concerned about the disappearance of your partner. We get dozens of calls a year about missing journalists and 99 of them end up being closed after the reporter turns up after a week long stakeout of some sort."

"Clark isn't like that!" Lois burst out. "I understand how reporters work and I know this isn't the case. Clark always checks in with either the Chief or I if he goes out on a stakeout on his own, which he rarely does. Sure, he randomly disappears sometimes in the middle of the day, but never for 24 hours at a time..." Lois trailed off, mentioning Clark's random disappearances weren't going to win her any help with these Federal goons. She supposed she was lucky they showed up at all, and probably only because Perry put some heavy pressure on them to find one of his star reporters.

Vivian and Danny exchanged a look. Random disappearances. Could be a sign of something, or maybe nothing at all. In any case it was something to keep track of. Vivian paused to take a stake of Lois before continuing the questioning. The small brunette looked nothing like her reputation had built her up to be. She was genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of her partner, if her jittery twitching was any indication. "Okay, we already have your statement of the last time you saw Mr. Kent, but can you tell us a little more about what you've been working on for the last week. It would give us a better frame of reference to know where to start looking."

Lois nodded slightly, "We've been workng separately for the last week or two, nothing big has come up requiring both of us on an assignment. He's had a smattering of happy little touchy pieces, one on a new park down by the Bay, a few Superman rescues, a charity auction, and I think maybe a few other things that Perry threw his way. I had Jimmy pull up everything he'd done for the past six months a few hours ago to check through, and while there are some significant incidents, all of the parties involved are either dead or in jail." A large stack of papers was pushed toward the two FBI agents to page through, "Jimmy's working on putting together a list of people released from jail in the past three months that has any connection to Clark."

Danny took the stack of papers out of Vivian's hands and motioned for her to continue talking, while he looked through for anything interesting that they might want follow-up information on. The questioning continued for another half hour, with Lois going through everything she knew about Clark, including their relationship with Superman, and all of Clark's quirkly habits, from random absences to his boy scout attitude toward life. Lois continued to get more agitated the longer the conversation continued. The time for action had come and gone and she was getting tired of sitting around with the crackerjack black suits. "Okay, I'm done here, I have a job to do, and you need to go do whatever it is your do." With that she stormed out the door, leaving a mildly surprised Danny and Vivian behind to just look at each other. It was time for a new angle.


	3. Chapter 3

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Tuesday, 5:00 PM

23 Hours Missing

Martin knocked on the door of Clark Kent's apartment, just to ensure that there was no one home before opening the heavy door with the key that the landlord gave him. The apartment was completely silent except for a steady beeping coming from the answering machine that sat on an end table by the couch. Sam walked into the apartment behind him slowly working a pair of rubber gloves onto her hands. "Wow, this guy was either expecting company or else he's just compulsively neat."

He nooded slight while taking stock of everything at a first glance. Sam was right, there were no dirty dishes in the sink, all books and reading material were neatly shelved on the bookcase, the pillows on the couch all properly fluffed and where they belonged, and not a spec of dust as far as he could tell. Despite it's near perfect state of cleanliness, the apartment still felt homey and welcoming.

"First things first," Sam walked over to the answering machine and pressed the Play button before taking a step back and crossing her arms. The machine started to play it's messages.

"Clark! It's me, I'm done with work and will be there in ten minutes. You better have that pizza ready, I'm starving. Bye!" The distinctive voice of Lois Lane faded out as the machine recited the time and went on to the next message.

"Clark, seriously, where are you? I'm at your door, let me in already." Next message.

"Clark! I can't believe you stood me up. I understand you were being nice by letting me come over, but the least you could've done was told me if you found something better to do." Lois Lane's voice had clearly gotten more hostile and annoyed sounding as the messages went on. Time for message number four.

"Clark. I have information on Ruffner." With a solid sounding click the message ended. Martin raised an eyebrow and jotted down the time of that message. 1AM. Interesting time to be calling someone with an ominous sounding message.

The machine continued to spit out messages, the rest of them either from Lois or Perry White wanting to know where the blazes he was and to get into work. Just as the final message finished the phone rang, startling Martin slightly, it wasn't something he expected. He motioned Samantha to come over and raised the phone up to his ear, leaving it so that Sam could hear the conversation as well. "Hello?"

"Who is this?" It was the dark ominous sounding voice from the earlier message.

"A friend of Clark's, he's out at the moment, can I take a message?"

Instead of an answer the connection was terminated abruptly at the other end. Sam just looked at Martin with a raised eyebrow. "Interesting fellow, I'll get Danny to start work on some phone records, maybe we'll get lucky and he called Dark and Doomful here from his home phone."

Martin just nodded slowly, lost in contemplation. "Yeah, let's finish up on the apartment so we can get back to the office."

Sam nodded and headed toward the bed room to see what was in there. The bed was made up nicely and nothing seemed to be even remotely out of order, even the closet door was neatly closed. A thin wallet sat on the small table by the bed and she opened it. Inside was a Metropolis driver's license, one credit card, a bank card, a few bills, and a press pass, all under the name of Clark Kent. That told her that he made it home from work at least and probably did not intend on leaving again, it was rare that a reporter left behind his press pass, you just never knew when something was going to happen. She put the wallet back down and wandered over to the clothes hamper, lifting the lid when she got there. A few articles of clothing at the bottom and she stuck a hand in to shift through them. A piece of blue material appeared out of the mess and she tugged it a little, trying to dislodge it so she could identify what it was. The entire piece of fabric came out and when she turned it around to look at the front her eyes widened, "Hey Martin, come see what I found!"

He appeared from around the corner, a piece of mail in hand that he had apparently just been looking at. When he saw what Sam was holding in her hands he stopped short and raised an eyebrow, "That's a Superman suit"

"Yeah, do you think it's real or does our Mr. Kent just have a thing for superheros?"

"Who knows, maybe Superman isn't the straightlaced boyscout that everyone thought he was."

Sam snorted and dropped the Superman outfit back into the hamper. "I think I'm done here, there isn't even a pencil out of place, let alone anything incriminating."

Martin nodded and they walked back out together, just giving him enough time to toss the mail back in the pile he found it before walking out the door with Sam.


End file.
